I love to embroider, quilt
and,in general, make things.
List Owner of CQForNewbies -
if you're a newbie to CQ,
come and join us.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Seam Embellishment of the Week

As some of you may know, I am one of the List Owners of CQForNewbies, a Yahoo group dedicated to helping newbies with crazy quilting. As a new feature on the list (and here), I'll be posting a weekly pic of different seam embellishments to help the newbies get some ideas and work on their swap blocks. I'm posting the pictures here because you can click on the pics and get an even bigger, up close view.

Today's seam is a rather simple one, involving only one stitch, the chain stitch. This seam was done by JK, my partner in crime (g). As you can see, she has used the chain stitch to make scallops along the seam line and then added chain stitches on the top curve of each scallop. Makes a nice seam embellishment don't ya think? She has used two colors to showcase the top chains. To get nice spaced scallops, I use a thread spool and put half of the spool edge on the seam line and draw around it with chalk. This gives you a nice half circle shape to follow and the chalk vanishes easily, even on the fancy fabrics.

But you don't have to stop with just the chain stitch. Some other variations would be to use bugle beads in place of the three chains on top. You could add buttons in the empty spaces of the scallops. And don't just stop with sewing on a plain button. While you're sewing your button on, add a few beads to the center and give it a little more bling. In crazy quilting, "too much is never enough." For those of you a little more advanced, you could do some silk ribbon embroidery and add a rose in the center of the scallops.

Hope this gives you some ideas to help you in embellishing your blocks.

If you need directions for doing the chain stitch, you can find some here.

A tip: I have a transparent plastic ruler that has many, many circles in different sizes. It is originally my husband's but I have now a good use for it. I'm sure you can also find such a ruler in a stationer's shop.